Pet Safety During Christmas – What to Watch For

The upcoming Holiday Season is an exciting time for everyone. Parents are turning into machines, capable of walking for hours without food or water, just to find that perfect gift. Children are turning into angels, rarely talking back or getting into trouble for fear of a giant lump of coal being delivered instead of gifts.

Your pets are also affected as they see things around them change. No more quiet living room for them to lounge in, replaced by a big flashing tree with bright lights, shiny tinsel and boxes covered with ribbons and wrapping paper. Gone are the tasty chew toys that usually litter the floor, replaced with carpet fresheners and cleaners for when guests arrive.

During the holiday season, you’ll want to keep an eye on your pets. Suddenly the house will be filled with flashy, shiny, tasty, glittery, pine-smelling, bright, noisy, crackly items, sure to intrigue most pets especially cats and dogs.

Dogs that are already chewers will find the Holiday season full of exciting new things to chew on. There’s strings of lights, ornaments on the tree or ones that have fallen down, nice, new, cool smelling boxes with wrapping paper. All these things are hard for a curious dog to pass by.

Cats love Christmas. They especially love ribbons and bows, tinsel and tree ornaments. There is many a story of emergency trips to the vet to remove yards of ribbon from inside a cat. Many cats enjoy the taste of ribbons and quite a few cats love playing with the tinsel, batting it around until they can eat it.

In order to avoid any costly and potentially fatal accidents this Christmas, make sure to take a few precautions before leaving your pet alone near a tree.

Keep most of your presents put away, unless your dog has been trained. Maybe this would be a good year to start that training? Put one fully wrapped present under the tree and see what happens. A couple of sniffs and your dog disregards it? Great. If your dog sees this as another chew toy, then you can step in and sort that out. You want to make sure your dog can resist temptation of else you might find yourself at a Vet, trying to get ribbons and bows and cardboard out of your dog. No easy task I can assure you!

Try and keep tinsel out of the equation if you have cats. We all know it looks great on a tree, but it creates a huge problem when cats ingest it. Try placing it further up on the tree, so that strings don’t hang down to where they can paw at it. If you can do without, even better. Tinsel is easily and readily consumed by cats, the shine and the glitter is hard to resist for any curious kitty.

Make sure to keep an eye out for any other hazards. Ornaments are pretty, but some are made of glass and can shatter into very small pieces when they get broken. Christmas tree bulbs are enjoyed by some dogs, I personally know of a dog that ate almost an entire string of Christmas lights, enjoying the “popping” of the bulbs in his mouth.

Keep an eye out and be diligent. If you see your pet even thinking about chewing on one of these new “toys”, make sure you take that as a chance to train your pet to stay away. Not only will you be able to enjoy your Christmas without coming home and having your tree all over the living room, but you won’t have to make expensive trips to the Vet during holiday season!